Consider the Man-Beast: Combining of the intelligence of humanity in one million years time with the power of the wolves of a thousand millennia hence, he has advance knowledge of future science and martial arts, psionic abilities, raw physical strength, and a hate of all life. He can destroy an adversary’s time sense, he possesses a field of mental repulsion so strong that Thor’s hammer cannot pierce it, and he can create anti-matter barriers. The Man-Beast is a pretty serious threat.

The High Evolutionary tries to get the drop on the Man-Beast with his Discordion, a horn that is a gun, producing sounds scaled to bring instant death to wolves. The Man-Beast is injured by this sonic assault, but he retreats to the High Evolutionary’s genetic laboratory. Sealing himself in, he uses the equipment found in the lab to build himself his own army of evil New Men.

There is an epic battle between the noble Knights of Wundagore with Thor fighting on their side, against the New-Men of the Man-Beast. It all comes down to a mano-a-mano fight between Thor and the Man-Beast, which Thor wins by punching really hard.

Having defeated the New-Men, the Knights of Wundagore corral their fallen foes into the Star Chamber, a space-pod that they shoot into the uninhabited Dromisana galaxy, where they can form their own society, free from the need to destroy all life on Earth.

Once the villains have been dispatched, the High Evolutionary decides that his mad science, how ever well intentioned, is too dangerous for Earth and so he reveals to Thor and Jane that Wundagore is in fact a giant rocket ship. As he bids Thor and Jane Foster farewell, he and his Knights depart to the unknown reaches of the universe.

Several months prior to this story, in the pages of Stan and Jack’s other fantasti-classic series, Fantastic Four, a character named Galactus was introduced. Galactus is a giant cosmic presence beyond good and evil from the other side of the center of the universe. This being travels from world to world, feeding on the energy of planets, reducing them to lifeless husks. Galactus had intended to feed upon Earth in this manner, but Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four threatened to destroy the universe if Galactus tried, and so the cosmic devourer agreed to forever leave Earth in peace.

Thor and his buddy the Recorder return to Rigel, where the Collectors honor their agreement to mark the Earth as off-limits. As they leave the Black Galaxy, they unwittingly pass Galactus as he heads into the Black Galaxy, intending to feed upon Ego.

Thor returns to Earth as Tana Nile departs it. She may have lost the Earth, but she returns to Rigel, where she has been chosen by the High Commissioner to be his wife. Thor, meanwhile, has been left with a Psyche-Search Gauge with which to find his hypnotized beloved.

He finds her in a bizarre compound in Europe known as Wundagore, which is guarded by animal-people riding rocket sleds. The leader of these people is known as the High Evolutionary, a man who has developed a technique to re-write the genes of animals, advancing their evolution one million centuries, which turns them into humanoids with animal heads. Since this is not remotely how evolution actually works, I would suggest that that this explanation is meant as a metaphor for the actual process at work. A lie-to-idiots, if you will.

The Knights of Wundagore attempt to restrain Thor from barging into their compound, but the God of Thunder will not be restrained. Thor finds Jane, who has taken a job teaching the animal-folk created by this weird science. Thor mistrusts this science stuff, but Jane is a woman of science, and assures him that there is nothing inherently evil about experimenting on animals to create a race of New-Men. Good on her.

Thor’s breaking and entering and shouting and fighting has distracted the High Evolutionary at a critical moment, and he has accidentally over-evolved a wolf! This combination of supreme man and supreme beast has created a hate-fuled Man-Beast, enemy of all that is living!

First Appearance: The High Evolutionary, Wundagore, the New-Men, The Man-Beast, Psyche-Search Gauge

This one’s strange. Thor and his new android buddy land on a sentient planet and fight it. It is a visual spectacle in full-on Kirby weirdness mode.

Ego is a planet who had decided to leave the Black Galaxy and conquer the outside universe. However, after Thor unleashes the full power of the storm upon him, Ego has second thoughts and decides never to leave his little secluded corner.

While Thor fights an entire planet, Jane Foster has found herself in Europe, compelled to send herself there by her ne’er do well roommate. She ends up in the company of two men named Porgia and Tagar. They ask her to be part of some larger scheme to solve the eternal secret of life itself, at which point she realizes that these guys might be nuts.

Meanwhile Tana Nile is notified that her claim on Earth has been revoked.